Dawn

Product Information

Geyh, Paula, Fred G. Leebron and Andrew Levy. "Octavia Butler". Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998: 554–555. Octavia E. Butler. (2017, April 28). Biography; A&E Television Networks. https://www.biography.com/writer/octavia-e-butler Google featured her in a Google Doodle in the United States on June 22, 2018, which would have been Butler's 71st birthday. [84] Baccolini, Raffaella. "Gender and Genre in the Feminist Critical Dystopias of Katharine Burdekin, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia Butler", in Marleen S. Barr (ed.), Future Females, the Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000: 13–34.

Lilith acclimates to living among the Oankali in the second half of "Family." She begins to understand the Oankali way of life and, though she is still an outsider, begins to move with more ease through their world. The largest development that helps Lilith with this process is the procedure that Nikanj performed on her at the end of the previous section. When Lilith awakes, at first she does not realize that anything is different. However, she suddenly realizes that there is no longer a language barrier between her and Nikanj: "It dawned on her slowly that Nikanj had come to her speaking Oankali and she had responded in kind—had responded without really thinking. The language seemed natural to her, as easy to understand as English" (79). Lilith realizes that Nikanj's procedure has improved her memory to such an extent that "now she remembered every day that she had been awake" (82). Later, Lilith will also be given the ability to open walls in her own home when Nikanj alters her body chemistry a bit more. Every single one of these procedures is done without her explicit consent—even though she does agree to the memory procedure, she does not know exactly what it will do to her. The Oankali seem to believe that they are free to make any changes they deem "for the greater good" no matter what the being they are operating on thinks or feels about it.

Dawn

As the novel progresses, the Oankali make several genetic modifications to Lilith. In "Family," Nikanj changes Lilith's genetics so that she can understand the Oankali language. Before the beginning of "Nursery," it also makes Lilith physically stronger and gives her the ability to open Oankali walls and control the suspended-animation plants. These transformations change not only her physical body but also her personality and behavior. As Nancy Jesser explains in her article "Blood, genes and gender in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Dawn," Lilith's physical and social transformation suggests a link between the body's makeup (genotype) and lived experience (phenotype): "Because the Oankali are expert readers of the human genome as well as its manipulators, Butler uses them to explore the mechanisms and limits of the effects of genotype manipulations and the experiences of lived bodies." In the mid-1990s, Butler published two novels later designated as the Parable (or Earthseed) series. The books depict the struggle of the Earthseed community to survive the socioeconomic and political collapse of 21st-century America due to poor environmental stewardship, corporate greed, and the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. [23] [29] The books propose alternate philosophical views and religious interventions as solutions to such dilemmas. [7] Lilith and Nikanj leave its childhood home. Nikanj's mates, Ahajas and Dichaan, assist Lilith with the transition—they carry Nikanj out of the home together. Lilith does not feel ready to leave Jdhaya's home, where she has grown comfortable. Lilith is going to live with Ahajas and Dichaan in their home while Nikanj matures over the course of several months. Tediin and Jdhaya say goodbye to Lilith. Lilith tells Tediin that she wishes she could stay with them, but she also must admit that she has grown close with Nikanj and would not like to be separated from it. Kahguyaht does not say goodbye to Lilith because it is the only one of Nikanj's parents who will be able to visit Nikanj in their new home. It comes to visit a few days later. To Lilith's surprise, Kahguyaht brings Lilith writing materials and several books. It also is more easygoing with Lilith. Lilith assumes this change in behavior is because she has proven her seriousness in taking care of Nikanj. Lilith welcomes Kahguyaht's visits as they are a change from the boredom of watching over Nikanj, who is sleeping so deeply he seems like a part of the room. On one of these visits, Lilith asks Kahguyaht about its sensory hand which is hidden within its sensory arms. Kahguyaht shows Lilith its sensory hand, which to Lilith looks like a starfish. It emits an odor that Lilith does not like. Kahguyaht tells Lilith that she does not like the odor because she is not bonded with Kahguyaht; however, once she has bonded more deeply with Nikanj, that will change. Lilith says that she did not know she was meant to bond in that way with Nikanj, and Kahguyaht responds that Nikanj should have told her. Because Nikanj has performed procedures on Lilith, it has left its mark. This mark will make Lilith want to avoid other Oankali who are not part of her new family group. Kahguyaht tells Lilith that her body will tell her what to do. Kahguyaht tells Lilith that it did not want to accept her at first but that she has proven herself. It now believes that Lilith will perform her upcoming duties well. Finally, it tells Lilith that her children will understand the Oankali, but she never will. The third book of the series, Survivor, was published in 1978. The titular survivor is Alanna, the adopted child of the Missionaries, fundamentalist Christians who have traveled to another planet to escape Patternist control and Clayark infection. Captured by a local tribe called the Tehkohn, Alanna learns their language and adopts their customs, knowledge which she then uses to help the Missionaries avoid bondage and assimilation into a rival tribe that opposes the Tehkohn. [23] [28] Butler would later call Survivor the least favorite of her books, and withdraw it from reprinting. Hayward, Philip, ed. (2004). Off the Planet. John Libbey Publishing. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt2005s0z. ISBN 978-0-86196-938-8.

Curtis, Claire P. "Theorizing Fear: Octavia Butler and the Realist Utopia." Utopian Studies 19.3 (2008): 411–431. JSTOR 20719919. Bradford, K. Tempest (July 10, 2014). "An 'Unexpected' Treat For Octavia E. Butler Fans". NPR . Retrieved October 15, 2021. Allison, Dorothy (December 19, 1989). "The Future of Female: Octavia Butler's Mother Lode". The Village Voice. p.67. While the humans sleep for centuries aboard the Oankali ship, the Oankali use that time to learn as much as they can about the human race. They cut open their human captives to learn how their bodies work, they learn from the first generation of humans who have never left the ship, they travel to Earth to study human ruins, and they study human language, literature, and history. All of this knowledge gives them the ability, according to the Oankali, to understand humans better than they know themselves. As Jdhaya tells Lilith, "'We've studied your bodies, your thinking, your literature, your historical records, your many cultures. . . We know more of what you're capable of than you do'" (31). Holden, Rebecca J., "The High Costs of Cyborg Survival: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy". Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 72 (1998): 49–56.Bollinger, Laurel. "Placental Economy: Octavia Butler, Luce Irigaray, And Speculative Subjectivity". Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 18.4 (2007): 325–352. doi: 10.1080/10436920701708044. For the next five years, Butler worked on the novels that became known as the Patternist series: Patternmaster (1976), Mind of My Mind (1977), and Survivor (1978). In 1978, she was able to stop working at temporary jobs and live on her income from writing. [10] She took a break from the Patternist series to research and write a stand-alone novel, Kindred (1979). She finished the Patternist series with Wild Seed (1980) and Clay's Ark (1984). George, Lynell (November 17, 2022). "The Visions of Octavia Butler". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved November 25, 2022. This conclusion to the Xenogenesis series focuses on Jodahs, the child of a union between humans, alien Oankali, and the sexless ooloi. The Oankali and ooloi are part of an extraterrestrial species that saved humanity from nuclear oblivion, but many humans feel the price for their help is too high: the Oankali and ooloi intend to genetically merge with humanity, creating a new species at the expense of the old. Even though the Oankali have–against their better judgment–created a human colony on Mars so that humanity as a species can continue unaltered, many human “resisters” either have not heard of the Mars colony or don’t believe the Oankali will allow them to live there. Jodahs, who was thought to be a male but who is actually maturing into the first ooloi from a human/Oankali union, finds a pair of resisters who prove that some pure humans are still fertile. These humans may be his only hope to find successful mates, but they have been raised to revile and despise his species above all else.

Lilith's initial discomfort at realizing that her captors, who turn out to be an alien race called the Oankali, have performed surgery on her body without her consent speaks to an overarching theme of Dawn. Throughout Dawn, the humans aboard the Oankali ship are forced to submit to their captors' desires. The question of consent seems to be relatively straightforward: because the humans are captive, they have no choice but to submit to the Oankali's decisions. In other words, the humans have no consent, and therefore no bodily autonomy, in the Oankali world. In "Womb," Lilith realizes this truth when she learns the Oankali have changed her genetic code and begins to see the way the Oankali treat humans as similar to the way humans used to treat animals on Earth: "This was one more thing they had done to her body without her consent and supposedly for her own good. 'We used to treat animals that way,' she muttered bitterly" (31).Lilith understands that she has been fundamentally changed by the Oankali. When she learns about Paul Titus, she also worries that he has been changed by them as well. She wonders, "[w]hat was he now? What had they created from their human raw material?" (83). The mutations that Lilith has undergone up to this point in the text make her an alien to herself. This is most apparent when she showers after Nikanj heals her after her encounter with Paul Titus and she smells foreign to herself: "Trying not to think, she bathed, worked to scrub off an odd, sour smell that her body had acquired" (100). Through this procedure, Lilith has been changed even further by the Oankali. She is a different being than the one they found on Earth—in ways that she knows and ways that she does not. Lilith herself has become a hybrid being, no longer completely human. Later, in "Nursery," these changes will cause a rift between Lilith and the other humans on the ship. They will see her Oankali-given abilities and believe that she is less than human. Dawn (1987) is the first novel in Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy, one of the key works of speculative fiction of the 1980s. Over the course of the trilogy, Butler’s alien invasion story subverts the standard genre expectations to deconstruct ideas around gender and sexuality, colonialism and invasion, and how we relate to the nonhuman. Dawn is a vital tale of alien encounter, one that is interested in humanity’s troubled relationship to the alien Other. Butler expertly weaves a complex tapestry around one woman’s intensely personal encounter with aliens, in which echoes of humanity’s history of colonialism and destruction of indigenous peoples are recontextualised. Butler asks deep and probing questions about the nature of humanity, one which unflinchingly stares into the darkest parts of human history but still manages to return with hope for the future. Nancy Jesser argues that Lilith's behavioral changes are part of a larger Oankali project of "improving" the human race. She writes, "[i]n Butler's plot, it is the Oankali's modification of the human genome that will accomplish what centuries of civilization, getting burnt in the hot fire of human stupidity, failed to do." In other words, Oankali modification of human genetics will change human behavior, and humanity will be less likely to destroy the earth with nuclear war. However, in the end, humans will no longer be human. Joseph understands this when he declares, at the end of "Nursery," that at least Peter "'died human'" (196). He wonders what they will be like once they finally make it to Earth: "'Will we want to by then? What will we be, I wonder? Not human. Not anymore'" (196). Slavery When Lilith is Awakened and starts living with and learning about the Oankali in turn, her knowledge acquisition is at a disadvantage. First, because Lilth's memory does not have the same capacity as Oankali memory and this puts her at a disadvantage when learning the Oankali language or learning to differentiate between Oankali individuals. More importantly, however, the Oankali will simply not provide an answer that they do not want Lilith to know. Some of this knowledge would give Lilith power the Oankali perceive as dangerous. For example, during her first meal at Jdhaya's house, Lilith asks whether human food can poison any Oankalis. Kahguyaht responds that vulnerable individuals—the elderly and the young—would respond negatively to certain human foods. Lilith asks which foods in particular, which angers Kahguyaht. It asks Lilith, "'Why do you ask, Lilith? What would you do if I told you? Poison a child?'" Lilith responds that she would never hurt a child to which Kahguyaht replies, "'You just haven't learned yet not to ask dangerous questions'" (48). The "dangerous knowledge" that Lilith would acquire in this situation would give her the power to decide whether a certain Oankali lives or dies; clearly, only the Oankali want to hold that power for themselves. To close the conversation, Kahguyaht tells Lilith, "'within reason, we want you to know us'" (48). Evidently, Lilith's "reasonable" knowledge of the Oankali does not include anything that augments her power. They intend to keep her (and the rest of humanity) subjugated, and therefore dependent on them.